TWITTER ARTWICULATE STUFF 200715

Most mornings I start my day by getting up and trying to get my brain going by attempting to contribute to Twitter's #Artwiculate strand, which is basically a "Word of the Day" thing that prompts you with a word and sees what you can come up with. Incidentally, this all tends to kick off around midnight UK time, so I'm usually at least five hours behind the real wits.

Recently, I seem to have slipped into a familiar pattern which is rapidly becoming a bit of a mental workout; I'll start with a "Holmes and Watson" moment and sometimes that's all I'll do. If I'm feeling particularly frisky, I might try a bit of  4-line doggerel to get my poetry muscles working, and, if that bit of me seems not to be too embarrassing, I might attempt one of my "hilarious" advertising strap lines for yet another mythical perfume brand.

I usually finish there, unless the rhythm of the word triggers a haiku, (after a fashion) or I think that there might be another pun that I can squeeze out of the word.

So, why am I suddenly telling you this?

Well, perhaps it's because I feel like I might be taking a little break from such nonsense for a while, and this means I can go forward stripped of all the embarrassment and self-inflicted "pressure" of attempting to conjure up yet another set on yet another morning.

You may mock, of course, but doing this sort of nonsense for months on end is what finally began to persuade me that I might want to try my hand at some "proper" poetry (or, at least, the nearest equivalent that I feel capable of  coming up with…)

Today's word was "Nefarious" with its definition (taken from the Artwiculate website): "Infamous for being wicked.

This was the "Holmes and Watson":

"Oh, I wouldn't call Professor Moriarty nefarious, Watson" said Holmes over breakfast, "He's far worse than that…!"

The "poem":

I might not be nefarious
Yet a girl once called me "wicked"
But she claimed I was Aquarius
And I nodded ('cos I'm a dickhead)

The tagline:

"Nefarious" (from Kelvin Clone) - the fragrance that you wear when you just feel like being bad.

The pun:

The years of the reign of the Emperor Nefarious were some of the darkest times in Roman history…

And finally, the "haiku":

Once celebrated
A former entertainer
Now nefarious

So now you know the fiendish workings of my so-called "mind", I'm sure that you'll agree that it was barely worth mentioning.